The moment when I caught sight of him was just the moment when he caught sight of me, and that wasn't till I was near. "Kitty!" says he, and a sort of groan came with the word. He had never called me so before, but I suppose he forgot. "Kitty," he said, "how is my poor Mary?" "O I think she's a little better," I said. "Not worse, and that is something." "Mr. Baitson been again?" he asked. "Not since breakfast," I said. "Poor Mary!" says Mr. Russell, and he sighed like a furnace. "I hope she is going to get on now," I said, for I thought he wanted cheering. Mr. Russell sighed again. "And I would make her come this journey," he said, self-reproachful like. "If I had been content to stay at home as she wanted, she might have been all right now, and as merry as a grig." Somehow I could not fancy Mary Russell exactly merry. It wasn't her way. "You could not know beforehand what would happen," I said. "Well, no, that's true," he said, and he brightened up. "Nobody can know beforehand what'll happen. That's true enough. It's a horrid thought that if she didn't get well— But after all, I'd got my reasons for coming away, just as much as she'd got her reasons for wanting to be at home. She needn't have been with me if she hadn't wanted. As you say, one can't tell beforehand how things are going to turn out. Kitty, you're a little comfort!" and he looked up at me, sitting on the bench still, while I stood on the path. "May I call you Kitty'—sometimes?" I said, I shouldn't mind if he did. What else was I to say? Easy enough now to know how I ought to have answered, but not easy at the moment. "Kitty, I wish I could have you for my little comfort always!" says he, fetching another sigh. My cheeks got as red as fire, and I didn't say a word. "I've never seen anybody like you," says he softly, looking at me again. "No, never! Kitty, do you know how pretty you are?" "I mustn't stop. I've got all the work to do," I said, knowing mother wouldn't like this. And yet I did not want to go. His soft words took hold of me. I thought that to be "his little comfort always" would be the best happiness I could have. "So busy!" says he. "Ah! I should like you to be where you needn't work; able to sit still and amuse yourself, and have folks to wait upon you." Little goose that I was, I thought this sounded first-rate. As if anybody was ever the happier for being idle! There's different kinds of work, no doubt; and everybody is happiest doing the sort of work for which he's best fitted by nature and training. No; I don't know as I've put that rightly either: for everybody's happiest doing the work which God has set him to do; and if he isn't fit for it by nature, God can shape him into fitness. But to have no work at all to do means nothing but discontent and unhappiness.